[ookdatnog]

> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep

Genuine question: is this something we know from evidence, or an assumption? I vaguely recall having read that comparison between skeletal remains of early farmers and hunter-gatherers indicated that the latter had a better diet, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly or how much that observation generalizes.

[culi]

We actually have a ton of evidence refuting this. The two things anthropologists spend their whole time rejecting in popular sciences is the barter myth and the idea that hunter-gatherer lives are "nasty brutish and short".

The nasty brutish and short idea might have been true about many medieval European peasants but the rest of the world wasn't cramped up with livestock and poverty conditions with poor sanitation. Other people simply didn't face as much disease. There was actually some really interesting work in bioarcheology in 2018 that showed that even extremely long lifespans was not actually that rare.[0] And those who made it to adulthood could generally expect a long life (obviously tons of variation here). In the city of Cholula, Mexico, between 900 and 1531, most people who made it to adulthood lived past the age of 50.[1]

[0] https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n...

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22329

Not to mention the famous "Man the Hunter" symposium where Marshall Sahlins introduced the Original Affluent Society Thesis which has since been largely upheld and reinforced.

[hollerith]

Both early farmers and hunter-gatherers regularly endured calorie scarcity. The difference between them along this dimension is minor compared to the difference between either group and us and our calorie security.

[sethammons]

> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep

I find this hilarious. Modern civilization has starvation at our doorstep. If the modern supply chains fail, so very many would starve.

Did toilet paper become scarce about 5 years ago? I don't see what protects the population from that for food and water.

[culi]

you have a point actually. Non-agricultural people had much more varied diets and we have almost zero archeological examples of famines leading to mass deaths of non-agricultural peoples but we have plenty of examples of that happening to agricultural people. Agriculture was, especially initially, a huge step back in food security.

Obviously things have changed a lot since then but some of the risks remain. Cuba is a fascinating case study for what happens when a modern agricultural supply chain can collapse (due to US sanctions). Many many died. But since then there's been a massive focus on locally grown food and even wild tending. I know many people who are into permaculture and alternatives to industrial agriculture who have traveled there to study